[Anonymous]

Hi all, I’ve been enjoying the forums in anonymity the past month. Great positive community. Happy to finally join.

I understand everyone’s situations (study preferences, time restraints, etc) are different but I wanted to get a quick conversation going about what you found (in)effective when studying for the CPA. I’m sure newbies to the CPA can benefit. I know I was experimenting quite a bit for AUD.

Watch the chapter video first? Do the MCQ first? Watch the entire chapter first? Watch a section, then read the section, then do the MCQ? Watch a section, do MCQ, then read? Do you take notes? When do you take notes? While the lecture is going? While you’re reading? (You get the idea)

I use Becker. I wasn’t too fond of the videos. It’s a lot of Tim telling me to highlight and underline stuff but I watched them all anyway. Did not take any notes for AUD or REG but I think I may need to start.

The reason for my post: I had lousy study habit for AUD. I had just finished Audit in college and had a great professor so that helped me with passing. My lousy study habit continued with REG. Just took the exam on 2/27 and boy, was that a humbling experience. I’ll be lucky if I get a 50.

[ridiqls]

I have a 100% visual based brain. Audio is ok too. But book reading and learning is extremely inefficient for me. Which is why I went with RogerCPA versus any other course out there. His teaching style is superb. I learned this when I took Intermediate and had a professor that was an amazing lecturer. Never experienced that and I Aced the class. She just made everything make sense.

I bought the entire Premium course which was a shitload of money but I guess if I fail even once or twice that's a couple hundred I'd have to pay to retake the exam so might as well take a course with the highest probably of success and ease of studying.

I watch his lectures, they're short never more than 25 mins. The course juxtaposes the video and the text so you can read both and take notes also. That reviews the content for me. I go through the entire Section. Then I'll go through the multiple choice questions and drill it out so I understand that section and have that section down. I plan to use Ninja MCQ for final review once I have all the sections down.

BEC has 7 sections and I plan to go through each section for 2 days, maybe 3 days tops. And 1 day of only drilling practice questions for that section I just completed. After I finish all 7, I will take practice tests for all the material in BEC.

Roger practice tests are cool though cause it lets you choose and customize the questions… so as I continue on the sections I can add the previous sections so I dont' forget them.

Hopefully my remittance application thing will be done quick so i can sit for BEC April 1.

edit: christ theres like 10 typos.. my mind must be tired.

[Anonymous]

@ ridiqls — Thanks for taking the time to respond. Not sure what kind of learner I am. The videos for Becker is video of text being highlighted and underlined with audio. There is an occasional cut scene where we see the instructor add additional insight. I actually love those scenes but they aren't too frequent (based on AUD and REG). The video for each section (i.e. Aud had 6 sections in total) are usually 3-4 hours long. Just getting through the video lectures burned me out for the day 🙁

When you spend your 1 day drilling MCQ, after you finish your section, is that the first or second time doing the MCQ for that section?

My biggest issue was when I finished all my sections and started to redo MCQ as part of my final review, I couldn't remember much from the earlier sections. It was extremely disheartening.

[ridiqls]

I just started studying for BEC which is my first part of the exam so I can't give you any definite guidelines as to what works but the way my course is designed, it has subsections to the sections.

So for example, BEC has 7 sections. 7 “major” sections, like Economics, Governance, etc. etc. For Economics, there are about 17 sub sections. One is microecon, then macroeconomics, then Multiplier Effect, etc. Each of these are anywhere from 5 mins to 25 minutes so all in all, they're probably like 1-1.5 hours for the entire section.

Between the subsections there's a few homework questions that make sure you get the material. Nothing crazy. Then at the end of the big SECTION, there's a 40 question quiz. And then you can use their test bank and go through hundreds of MCQs, which is why I do on the last day of the Section.

So I'd watch mini videos in each subsection, small test to make sure I get it. Finish the Economics section with a 40 quiz test, find out what I did wrong and make sure I understand it. Then start quizzing like crazy.

After that, it's time for section 2 for a few days. Then section 3. And after all 7 sections, I would choose all 7 sections in the test bank and just drill the entire BEC content. Ninja MCQ also as I heard the questions are harder.

I was going to buy becker but it was just too pricey. And I'm kind of glad I didnt because the videos sound like a method I would have trouble learning in. I do better with high energy motivations with analogies and mnemonics.

[Author]

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